The Role of Myth in Creative Advertising Design: Theory, Process and Outcome Gita Venkataramani Johar, Morris B. Holbrook and Barbara B. Stern In an empirical study using five real-world creative teams from an advertising agency, participants were given a strategic brief for a new beverage product and asked to design the layout for @ print ad. Think-aloud concurrent protocols obtained from each team's copywriter, art director, and the two working together were analyzed to examine the creative process and its relationship to the created advertisement. Interpretive analy- ses of the protocols reveal that the teams access culturally available plot patterns but in different ways. In this study and with the particular materials and situational context explored here, four of the five teams chose to pursue a single mythic structure to the apparent detriment of their final product. Only one tear engaged in fully diversified idea generation involving a wide range of alternative scenarios. Not coincidentally, as a tentative conclusion, this more flexible team produced the ad judged most successful by advertising profes- sionals, This still-to-be-tested exploratory finding deserves further investigation in future research that embodies various methodological refinements. Gita Venkataramani Johar Madison Avenue is in the business of mythmaking, of creating and perpetu: (Ph, New York atveraity is ating the myths that refleet and shape our values, sensibilities, an les, Nis och Ueber iting the myths that refleet and shape our values, sensibilities, and lifestyl Columbia Unversity Graduate School of Bosiness Morris B. Holbrook (Ph.D. Calumbia University) is Wil Dillard Professor of Mark Seema atepraly Gran Organizational theorists consider creativity the cornerstone of competi- Siadiare Be Bore GHbistie tive advantage (Amabile 1988, 1996; Devanna and Tichy 1990; Shalley Univenity of New Yorkiis Protecssr 1995), defining it as the production of novel and useful products that en- MWof Marketing, Rutgers University. hance a firm’s ability to respond to environmental opportunities (Amabile ‘The authors gratefully acknowledge 1983; Staw 1990; Van de Ven 1986; Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin 1993). Randazzo 1993, p. 1 troduction funding from the Marketing Science Prior research has examined personal characteristics such as general cre- Calunhia Business Seheafseeuty ative ability, domain-relevant skills, and intrinsie motivation (Barron and Research Fund. They thank Asim “Harrington 1981), as well as organizational factors, such as job complexity Mier tuna eee mputeatcrery, and supervision style (Amabile 1988; Amabile et al. 1996; West and Farr Stage ofthis research, Amuitava 1989), that facilitate creative performance. Recently, researchers have also Chattopadinay Jacob Coldeaters, investigated the joint contribution of personal and organizational factors Gear heivel comnenter and have found that high levels of both factors encourage the highest de- Cosentino for his help indesigning grees of ereative performance (Oldham and Cummings 1996) the stil and obtaining Nonetheless, creative processes in organizations are not fully understood Fete pepee enti (cf. Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin 1993), leaving some key unanswered questions: “Are there processes that are capable of producing creative designs, and are these processes different from those that may be used to produce designs that are not considered creative?” (Gero and Maher 1993, p. 3), Such questions are especially pertinent to advertising organizations, for despite Ford's (1996) conclusion that domains at the organizational level do not generally encourage creativity, the advertising domain is singled out as ‘an exception because of its inherently creative purpose Ironically, advertising creativity has barely been studied. Accordingly, Journal of Advertising, this article, we focus on the creative process underlying advertising design to Volume XXX, Number 2 explore certain characteristics of the design process that may foster the devel- Stoner 001 ‘opment of a more or less creative ad. A deeper understanding of this ereative2 The Journal of Advertising process can help suggest guidelines for creativity train- ing programs. Specifically, such research can highlight, those aspects of the design process that should be nur- tured and encouraged so that this process might culmi- nate more effectively in a successful creative product. ‘The paper begins with a brief review of creativity in the design process and then presents a study of ad agency creative teams, each composed of an art diree- tor and a copywriter, telling us their thoughts as they work on the task of designing a print ad for a new product. The data consist of the teams’ verbal protocols and ads, analyzed by the authors with the ads also submitted to “expert” judges for evaluation. The find- ings suggest that, in this situation, four out of five creative teams tend to pursue a thematically restricted approach, only rarely drawing from a more diverse and potentially fruitful variety of themes to achievea truly creative output (cf Guilford 1956; Osborn 1963). In particular, the ap- proaches of these four teams appear to illustrate key conceptual categories from the mythic framework de- veloped by Frye (1957). Using material drawn from the verbal protocols, in the spirit of exploratory illus- tration within a limited problem-specific context, we suggest that overreliance on a particular mythic type might inhibit creativity, hence our title's focus on the “role of myth” in advertising design. The Creative Design Process ‘The creative design process in advertising exempli fies a general class of design problems also found in product development and other organizational do- mains. Design activity involves the creation of a com- plete set of specifications intended to ensure the per- formance of various functions by an artifaet—whether candy bar, a painting, or an advertisement—in which design problems are characterized by a task environ- ment specifying a set of functional requirements and objectives, a collection of constraints, and a technol- ogy of components to be employed in design activity (Chandrasekaran 1990). These elements map onto con- cepts in advertising design, such as persuasion objec- tives, budgetary or media limitations, and visual or verbal components, that are combined to create an ad. Most researchers posit a link between creative pro- cesses and products (Alden, Hoyer, and Lee 1993; Catford and Ray 1991; Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Dahl, Chattopadhyay, and Gorn 1999; Goleman, Kaufman, and Ray 1992; Holbrook 1984, 1998; Kao 1996; Koestler 1964; Kover 1995; Meyer 1956, 1967, Ray and Myers 1986). In this connection, one popular conceptualization classifies design activities as routine, innovative, or creative (Rosenman and Gero 1993). In this scheme, a “creative” product is not only original, novel, interest- ing, and unique (ie,, innovative), but also useful and practical (Dasgupta 1994; Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992; Weisberg 1993). In other words, going beyond mere newness, a genuine creation also works. Anything less may be merely miscreation. Thus, an advertisement is, not considered a creative success in the real world un- less it achieves a client's communication objectives (Kover, James, and Sonner 1997). Despite general agreement about the essentials of the creative product, there is considerable disagree- ment about the distinetive nature of the ereative pro- cess. Some researchers consider this process qualita- tively different from “ordinary” day-to-day thinking, involving a leap of freedom or a flash of insight that cannot be reconstructed or analyzed (Guilford 1950; Wallas 1926). The difference is attributed to the use of nonformulaic thinking in creative tasks versus ready-made formulas in ordinary ones. In the former, ‘many innovative ideas are generated (Campbell 1960), to extend the space of possible solutions, to move “outside the box,” or to devise an altogether new space (Rosenman and Gero 1993). In contrast, reductionist researchers propose that the creative process involves only ordinary mental functions and is, therefore, only quantitatively differ- ent from everyday thinking (Dasgupta 1994; Finke, ‘Ward, and Smith 1992; Perkins 1981; Weisberg 1993), with creative thought more meticulous than ordinary thinking in “staying within the lines.” Here, innova- tive idea generation occurs because (rather than in spite) of the constraints imposed by preformed men- tal categories. The underlying premise is that cre- ativity works within boundaries, for only imaginative use of formulaic elements results in an elegant out- ‘come. To compose a sonnet, for example, a poet must adhere to its strict stylistic rules (14 lines, metric structure, rhyme scheme, ete.) A third perspective is integrative, as when synthe- sizers such as Hofstadter (1985) claim that the sine qua non of creativity is a balance between freedom and constraints. ‘The process becomes unbalanced if there are too many restrictions or too much freedom (Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992). This integrative view is consistent with new product development programs such as Tauber's heuristic ideation technique (HIT), in which a person is given a structured framework for generating creative new product ideas and in which constrained idea generation often outperforms free- form association (Tauber 1972; see also Goldenberg, Mazursky, and Solomon 1999a, b). Perhaps because of disagreement about the global nature of the process, some researchers begin not.Summer 2001 with the whole, but with the parts, aiming at identifi- cation and analysis of the key activity steps (Taylor 1959; Wallas 1926), In advertising research, Young, (1974) proposes a five-step creative sequence: “gather raw materials, organize them, drop the entire subject (incubation), wait for the idea to appear, and adapt the idea to practical use” (Reid and Moriarty 1983, p.. 127), More recently, when Kover (1995) examined the implicit theories of communication used by copywriters in the ereation of advertising, he formulated a post-hoc developmental sequence based on the copywriter’s in- ternal dialogue with an implied reader. However, no further research on the process of advertising creativ- ity ina real-time, real-world environment has appeared. Our study begins such an exploration of the advertis- ing design process as it occurs in an agency setting. Propositions ‘The real-world setting actualizes the controversy over whether the creative process is empowered by freedom or constraints, Ad design occurs in the presence of pre~ existing external restrictions such as budgets, time lim- its, competitive positioning strategy, and client satis- faction, We take these as constants and focus instead on internal constraints as the variables of interest. Consistent with the literature (de Bono 1973; Guilford 1956; Osborn 1963; Wallas 1926; Winston 1990), we claim that too many constraints occur when—for whatever reasons—a team relies on a single formula or pattern, perhaps one that has proven suc- cessful in the past or that is temperamentally eonge- nial to the cognitive styles and working habits of the team members, In formulaic thinking, a team short- cuts the generative stage of creativity and tends to satisfice by selecting a convenient story or theme that allows for completion of a task in the allotted time span but that negatively influences the outcome. Ad: herence to one thematic formula may lock creative partners into self-imposed boxes that limit their free- dom in terms of the range and flexibility of their imaginative outputs. The consequence may be a less successful advertisement—one whose creators have painted themselves into a corner that not only restricts, the scope of their vision, but also limits the effective- ness of their expression, resulting in an ad that may be Jess than optimally appropriate to the product or less than fully reflective of the brand. Even when such eon sequences as Clio-type awards ensue, an advertise- ment may suceeed only in meeting a professional prize- winning standard rather than achieving the client's communication objectives (Kover, James, and Sonner 1997), In contrast, those who engage in more fully de- veloped idea generation and sereening may entertain a broader range of options that allows them to succeed creatively and design more impactful advertising mes- sages. Thus, we believe that creative advertising is ‘more likely to emerge from a process of iteratively gen- erating ideas from varying approaches rather than from confinement to a limited set of themes or other appeals. ‘We examine our proposition in an exploratory em- pirical setting by studying advertisements produced by several teams of copywriters and art directors on the basis of a positioning strategy set forth in a stra- tegic brief for a single brand. By holding the product, brand, and positioning strategy constant, we can ex- amine differences in the creative process among teams and how these differences lead to varying ads for the same product offering, Method Preliminary Interviews ‘Typical of exploratory research, we began by conducting, in-depth interviews with some expertsin the field, namely, five creative personnel and four account managers at ‘multinational advertising firm headquartered in New York. ‘These interviews revealed that the major inputs received by real-world advertising creatives are a client background, document and a strategic brief, The latter describes the target market, the intended message, and the communication objective. It may also specify such ‘components as a slogan, emotional tone, brand equity position, format (eg., problem-solution), end benefit demonstration, and/or slice-oF life platform. This brief provides information needed to facilitate creation of the visual and verbal message elements, usually by a creative team composed of a copywriter and an art, director. The way this team functions depends on the idiosyncrasies of those involved. In many cases, following an iterative process, the team members initially work together, break up to work separately, pool their results, break up again, and so forth. Subject to the inevitable constraints of a simulated setting, we used the information about client input and team conventions in, modeling the advertising design task. Overview: Think-Aloud Protocols ur use of think-aloud verbal protocols follows pre- cedents in disciplines ranging from architecture and mechanical engineering to poetry (Goel and Pirolli 1992; Patrick 1935, 1937; Ullman, Diettrich, and Tauffer 1988). As early as the 19303, Patrick (1935, 1937) studied the process of poetic creation by select:4 The Journal of Advertising ing a group of poets and asking them to think aloud as they composed a poem. Kover (1995) used a simi- lar procedure to study agency ereatives' internal dia- logues during the copywriting process. However, whereas Kover collected retrospective recollections, we focus on real-time creativity by using concurrent think-aloud verbal protocols generated during the act of creation itself (Ericsson and Simon 1980, 1993), Verbal Protocol Study Participants. Five creative teams from a midsized advertising ageney in New York volunteered ta par- ticipate in the study, with all members receiving $50 for their help. Each team consisted of a copywriter and an art director who customarily worked together as partners in ad design. Participants ranged in age from 24 to 39 years and had worked in their creative departments for 2 to 6 years. Educational backgrounds. included degrees in English, visual arts, fine arts, psychology, and history. The small sample—typical, of interpretive research in general (e.g., Thompson, Locander, and Pollio 1989) and design research in particular (e.g., Goel and Pirolli 1992}—was a practi- cal necessity stemming from the need to collect a voluminous amount of data from each creative team (actual creative partners in a simulated real-world task rather than, say, advertising students in a labo- ratory setting). The study was conducted in the ad agency after working hours, providing a familiar en- vironment for the participants and requiring approxi- mately two hours for each creative team. ‘Motivating Context and Materials. The study design used previously established guidelines for collecting ver bal data Griesson and Simon 1980, 1993), modified to suit the advertising domain, Task-specific materials were con- structed in accordance with those used in a marketing case called “Sodaburst” (Greyser 1970), also modified in accordance with a creative director's comments. The task ‘was to create an advertisement for a fictitious new prod- uct, an instant ice eream soda brand called “Tey Soda.” The teams were give two documents: (1) a client background document containing information about the company, the product, and the competitive envi- ronment and (2) strategic brief specifying the brand name, product attributes, and positioning strategy. Based on the Sodaburst case, the product and posi- tioning strategy were described as follows in the cli- ‘ent background document: ‘The product is an instant ie eream soda. It con- sists ofa single unit made of ice cream, syrup, and frozen carbonated water fused together and pack- aged in a “miniature” cylindrical ice cream eon- tainer. The ice cream soda is prepared by slipping, the single unit (ice cream, syrup, and frozen car- >onated water) from its cylindrical container into a large glass and adding tap water. Upon contact. with the water, the frozen carbonated water starts to release and mix with the syrup. In one minute, the soda is ready to serve, The produet is available in two flavors—choeolate (vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup) and strawberry (vanilla ice cream with strawberry syrup). The product is to be sold in two, three-, or four-soda sizes, from ice cream cabi- nets in the retail outlet, and it has to be kept in the refrigerator until ready for use. Research has indi- cated that 70% of adults and 80% of teens/children would consider drinking ice cream soda. Usage is expected to peak in summer and drop off in winter. ‘To flesh out the competitive environment, three com- peting products were also described in this document: a milk shake; a ready-to-drink, milk-based canned product; and a creamy, chocolate milk-based additive to make rich milk shakes out of plain milk. The strategic brief was modeled on real examples provided by ageney personnel. Itcontained information about the following: (1) brand name (Iey Soda), (2) the media plan (full-color print ads), (3) the target audi- ‘ence (an all-family audience with an emphasis on home- makers with children between the ages of 5 and 17 years), (4) the advertising objectives (creating brand ‘awareness by announcing that the familiar taste and enjoyment of an ice cream soda are now quickly and conveniently available at home and that the product's quality and wholesomeness make it suitable for all- family consumption), (5) the key end benefit claims (quick, convenient, tasty, and a wholesome treat), and (6) the emotional tonality of the message (dramatizing interest and excitement in the new product concept). Procedure. Participants were told that the study addressed the advertising process and that the re- searchers were interested in what they were thinking, as they designed an ad. Even though advance infor- mation about the process being studied could poten- tially alter the nature of the process itself, we had to divulge our interest in thought processes to gain com- pliance with the think-aloud procedure. The teams were then given a page of instructions derived from Ericsson and Simon (1993) describing the think-aloud task. They were told that their ongoing commentary about developing the ad would be tape-recorded and ‘that the tapes would be transcribed. They were also told that the ads would be evaluated by a panel of expert judges and that the ad judged to be the most creative would win a special prize. ‘The procedure began with three practice problems given to the creative partners to accustom them to‘Summer 2001 thinking aloud (Eriesson and Simon 1993). Each mem. ber of the team worked on one practice problem alone, after which the two members worked on another prob- Jem together. They were instructed to think aloud as they did these problems and, after completing each task, were asked to provide a retrospective report about their thought processes. ‘The study task was more elaborate, consisting of six separate phases performed partly on an individual ba- sis (with team members working independently in dif- ferent rooms) and partly on a team basis (working together in the same room). This structure is consistent, with agency executives’ views about creative composi- tion provided in the preliminary interviews. Both indi- vidual and team protocols were taped to provide a rich data set of monologues and dialogues. Participants were instructed not to ask questions, to work as they usually did, and to remember to think aloud in all phases. In Phase 1, each participant received the client background document and the strategic brief and worked alone for fifteen minutes, reading the docu- ments for understanding while thinking aloud. The researcher encouraged thinking aloud whenever there was a lapse but did not answer any questions or interfere with the participant's thought processes in any other way. During this time, prior to joint consul: tation, each team member began to develop ideas for the ad. In Phase 2, the creative partners were asked to work together as a team in their usual manner for fifteen minutes and were reminded to speak aloud if the conversation lapsed. In Phase 3, the participants again worked individually, this time for twenty min- utes, again with reminders to think aloud (if neces- sary). In Phase , the team worked together for twenty minutes to produce a rough print ad with visual art, and verbal copy. At this point, the researcher collected all working notes and the print ad. In Phase 5, each participant provided a retrospective report describing, his or her recollections of thoughts during the process of designing the ad in the order in which they had ‘occurred. In Phase 6, participants gave their resumes to the researchers, completed a questionnaire about their advertising experience, and evaluated their own ad on two criteria: (1) the extent to which it met its objectives and (2) their level of satisfaction with it Independent Creativity Evaluations by Expert Judges Expert evaluations were collected to provide a more independent set of ratings than those by the research- ers or participants. The five print ads were rated for creativity by three expert judges—a creative person, an advertising research person, and an account plan- ner—from ad agencies other than the one for which the participants worked. These judges studied the relevant materials and then evaluated the creativity of each ad using seven-point ratings of “originality, “meeting strategie objectives,” “achieving the desired tone,” and “satisfying the makers of ley Soda” (Boden 1991; Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992; Gero and Maher 1993; MeLaughlin 1993). Clearly, these expert evalu- ations provided only a small sample of opinion, in- tended as an informal yardstick as is consistent with the exploratory nature of the study. In this regard, “creativity is a subjective judgment made by mem- bers of the field about the novelty and value of a product; it is not an inherent quality that can be measured independent of social-construction processes within a field” (Ford 1996, p. 1115). Description of Process ‘To begin analyzing the data, we examined the pro- tocols from each team in search of commonalities as well as differences in the approaches taken to ad design. All participants started by reading the client background document and strategic brief and gener- ating ideas and questions as they read the materials. At this point, the creative effort typically focused on trying to pin down the product benefits. Also, both art, directors and copywriters tended to generate some preliminary ideas in both verbal and visual forms. Aids used to generate creative ideas included visual- izing the product or the ad, relating the product to their own experiences, and relating the product and/ or ad to movies and/or art. In Phase 2, when the team got together, its mem- bers shared their creative suggestions and evaluated each other's ideas, In some cases, they jointly elabo- rated an idea, with both team members building the copy as well as the art. Some new ideas also appeared in this second phase as the team members made rough sketches and wrote down tentative copy. At the end of this phase, the teams generally short-listed some ideas for further consideration. Again, in Phase 3, there was no strict demarcation of the work. Both art directors and copywriters ad- dressed the visual art as well as the verbal copy by generating headlines, tag lines, or body text. Few new ideas appeared in Phase 3, and only one team selected an ad in this phase. Finally, when the teams ‘again worked together in Phase 4, they briefly dis- cussed all of the ideas that they had considered indi- vidually but quickly moved toward selecting one idea and working exclusively on it.The Journal of Advertising The final ad selected was generated in the first phase by three teams, in the third phase by one team, and in the fourth phase by one team. Four of the ads, finally chosen were initially generated by the copy- writer and one by the art director. Both team mem- bers constantly discussed the visuals as well as the different copy elements and the layout for the final ad, Sometimes elements from ideas that had initially started out differently were adapted and used in the body copy of the final ad. Another general observation is that ereatives seem to share mental models. The teams all picked out certain elements from the creative brief, and certain themes recurred among all of them. For example, all teams discussed a “retro” approach to the ad, an idea apparently spurred by the nature of the ice cream soda product eategory. Furthermore, all teams discussed the copy line, “Just add water.” Finally, all teams dis- cussed the idea of a soda fountain in the freezer or an ice eream parlor in the kitchen. The main challenge the teams faced seemed to lie in pinning down the unique product benefit (speed? convenience? fun?) and finding, the most effective way of communicating this benefit to a broad target audience. Insofar as the teams were somewhat constrained by the imposed study procedures, the findings reflect a circumscribed description of the creative process. The retrospective interviews revealed that, because many participants customarily worked together all of the time, some felt limited by having to work both individually and in teams. Furthermore, the time lim- its, lack of product availability, lack of interaction with the client for clarifications, inability to use a computer, and nature of the product were all viewed as possible detriments to creativity. Also, some felt that the creative process defies description because creation occurs when “the mind wanders” or when “introspection” takes place. Although we acknowledge these limitations, we believe that, in the absence of mind-reading machines, the think-aloud approach enables us to explore some key dimensions of the creative process. Toward this end, we now proceed to analyze the think-aloud data in greater detail. Analytic Approach ‘The researchers analyzed the think-aloud protocols by means of an interpretive method derived from hermeneutics and modified to include sequential it- erations among multiple investigators (Hirschman and Holbrook 1992; Holbrook and Stern 1997; O'Shaughnessy and Holbrook 1988; Stern and Holbrook 1994; Thompson, Pollio, and Locander 1994). This methodology was dictated by the nature of our research question and responds to the call for rigor- ous postmodern organizational research (Kilduff and Mehra 1997) and for hermeneutic investigations of interpersonal psychology (Packer 1985, 1989). Spe- cifically, the three prineipal researchers pursued a hermeneutic approach to interpretation based on se- quential refinement of the analysis through multi- authorial dialogue. Each researcher began by pro- ducing an independent reading of the team protocols. All three then engaged in a group session to negotiate a tentative collective reading. Here, we converged on an overall interpretation of the texts consistent with a framework grounded in mythic content (described in the following section). At this stage, it might have been possible to pursue some other analytic scheme, such as a focus on the use of metaphors (Black 1968; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Thompson, Pollio, and Locander 1994; Zaltman and Coulter 1995), a decoding of implicit allegorical content (Stern 1988), structural semiotic comparisons (Holbrook and Hirschman 1993), gender stereotypes (Holbrook and Stern 1997; Stern and Holbrook 1994), or a psycho- analytic interpretation (Holbrook 1988). However, it, appeared to us that, as a starting point for subse- quent refinement, the dominant themes contained in the team protocols corresponded to categories sug- gested by the four mythic orientations of Frye’s (1957) taxonomic scheme and later used in advertising re- search (Stern 1995). Thus, we adopted Frye’s taxonomy as the basis for a tentative preliminary overall inter- pretation subject to further adjustment through the ‘back-and-forth process characteristie of the hermeneu- tie circle wherein an initial overall reading is “tested” against detailed evidence from a close reading of the text, potentially falsified, revised accordingly, further subjected to detailed scrutiny, further refined, and so on, in an unfolding sequence of self-corrective elabora- tion (Gadamer 1975; Hirschman and Holbrook 1992; Holbrook and Hirschman 1993; Holbrook and O'Shaughnessy 1988; Rieoeur 1976, 1981) More specifically, after initial independent read- ings and joint consultation, we adopted a working hypothesis based on the myth scheme and used this tentative framework (described in the next section) to classify the creative outputs of the five teams by ex- amining each protocol and advertisement for evidence of mythic content and structure. At this stage, even, though any given team’s protocol contained traces of more than one mythic category, four teams’ outputs seemed to fall primarily into one or another of the four different mythic categories, whereas the fifth team’s output revealed considerable boundary cross-‘Summer 2001 Table 1 Working Definitions of Themes Pertinent to the Four Mythic Orientations of Northrop Frye (1957) Comedy Romance Tragedy irony Heroic Happy Adventure Struggle Failure Action pursuit or wath to of new quest serious understand order issues reality Source Seeking Seeking Heroic Appearance of pleasure, peace, suffering versus Tension fun, or beauty, or and/or reality; comfort something doom by surface special fatal flaw versus substance Outcome Festive Retro- Death, Epiphany, celebration spection to danger, or under- idealized avoidance standing, past or of harm revelation, nostalgia insight, unmasking, demystification ing. This phase of the analysis progressed sequen- tially from one to another researcher, with each modi- fying the others’ interpretations. After subsequent iterations, our interpretations converged on an over- all reading, namely, the consensus reported in what. follows. Notice that, though we here report the over- all consensus, this interpretation emerged from a highly elaborated process of testing, revising, retest ing, and further refining sequential close readings of detailed evidence from the protocol texts. Frye’s Taxonomy of Myths Asindicated, our collective, sequentially negotiated reading of the team protocols focuses primarily on the mythic themes of the relevant textual material. Consensus fed to the choice of Frye’s (1957) Anatomy of Criticism as an elegant and parsimonious taxonomy that divides all literature into four pregeneric eatego- ries: comedy, tragedy, romance, and irony/satire. Our adaptation of this scheme appears in Table 1 Frye (1957) argues that the basic plot patterns de- scribe different types of causality and chronological progression and that the “how” of narration sustains different values. Briefly, “comedy ends in joy, and its correspondent value is happiness; tragedy ends in sadness, and its value is wisdom; romance ends in nostalgia, and its value is ideal peace or beauty; and irony ends in surprise, and its value is excitement” (Stern 1995, p. 167). The theory’s explanatory power lies in the correspondence of each mythos to an as- pect of the central cultural monomyth based on the natural cycle of birth (comedy}—growth (romance)— death (tragedy)—rebirth (irony), This eycle charac- terizes nature's seasons, the human life cycle, the product diffusion process, and the narrative struc- tures found in cultural productions from prehistoric myths to postmodern advertising. ‘Although several researchers have previously iden- tified mythic patterns in consumer and advertising texts (Levy 1981; Pollay 1986; Randazzo 1993; Stern 1995), none has focused on the link between myth and the creative process in advertising. For example, Levy (1981, p. 53) points out that “mundane, secular, little myths” served the function of organizing “con- sumer reality in accordance with underlying logical structures” and studies consumer-generated “little myths” in terms of binary oppositions. He suggests that others might “want to explore the nature and processes of creativity as they go on in creators or as they are manifest in their productions” (Levy 1981, p. 50). But Levy (1981, p. 55) himself focuses instead on the underlying mythic structure of consumer stories about “food preparation, service, manners, and con- sumption ... all used in symbolie ways,” following Levi- Strauss’ (1981, p. 495) theory of cooking as a “lan- guage through which ... society unconsciously reveals its structure.” Later, Stern (1995) extended Levy's ————8 The Journal of Advertising analysis of food-related myths by applying Frye's tax- ‘onomy to organize the structural binaries in advertise- ments and consumer stories into four major types. Her data set consisted of Thanksgiving stories first ana- lyzed by Wallendorf and Arnould (1991) and food ad- vertisements in the coupon section of a Sunday news- paper. However, Stern (1995) did not consider the role of mythic formulae in the creation of advertisements. ‘The findings reported in the next section extend Stern's (1995) Frye-based analysis to the creative pro- cess. Just as mythic elements echo “the values, lifestyles, and sensibilities of the target consumer and/or culture” (Randazzo 1993, p. 33), so too do they represent the cultural background of advertising creatives. This shared culture is assumed to be espe- cially evident in reference to the symbolic meaning of food products, given the central importance of food in a society's story stock. The body of narrative forms that, members of a culture inherit shapes the culture's story stock through creative transmutation, as well as trans- mission, and provides structure for advertisingcreatives, as well as poets or playwrights, Thus, because our team protocols suggest and support the hypothesis that ad themes embody mythic patterns, our findings focus on the way that copywriters’ creative efforts result in the reflection of these themes in a finished advertise- ment. In so doing, we frame our exploratory results regarding the role of myth in advertising to inelude the outcome (ie, the ad), as well as the process (i.e., the team task), That is, we explore the relationship between the advertising creation process and the effectiveness of the creative product to determine not simply what myths are used, but also how they come to be used Results Overview Each of four teams (but not the fifth) exhibits evi- dence of an orientation toward one of the mythic types—comedy, romance, tragedy, or irony, However, the utility of this orientation as a formal creative heuristic—a set of pegs on whieh creatives can hang content elements—appears to be diminished by its tendency to distort the creative process such that the final product is suboptimal. Put differently, each of four teams selects a problem-solving approach that echoes the members’ personal interaction style but that contributes to a solution flawed by internal in- consistencies between elements of the ad concept and its execution or between different elements in the ad. ‘That is, the tendency of each team to embrace one or another mythic orientation gives rise to internal contra- dictions that dilute the effectiveness of the advertisement produced, and the formulaic myth-centered process en- genders less effective creation. In this respect, the fifth team, which does not narrow its horizons to the exeeu- tion of one primary mythic theme, appears to be the proverbial “exception that proves the rule.” Let us now turn to the team interactions and ana- lyze each phase to support the general interpreta- tion. Note that, in reporting these findings, we focus primarily on the detailed evidence from the team protocols to substantiate our overall reading. Recall that all such aspects of the global reading emerged from a hermeneutically circular process. What we report here is not the sequential steps in this evolving analysis (any more than we would report each iteration in an eigen decomposition and varimax rotation lead- ing toward the selection of a final set of principal com- ponents), but rather the emerging consensus that rep- resents our overall interpretation. (Note also that, in these analyses, the names but not the genders of the participants are disguised in all cases.) Comedy Orientation—Linda (Copy) and Martin (Art) ‘The orientation toward comedy—the mythic type that embodies a general atmosphere of fun, happy pursuit of a new order, attainment of pleasure, and a celebratory ending (Table 1}—is heralded by a preoc- cupation with water, the natural element associated with birth and renewal. Phase Linda. From the outset, Linda selects the theme “fun times off,” which is found in the strategic brief. Having identified a comedy orientation as the “what” of the advertising strategy, she considers the target market to answer the question, “fun for whom?” Still following the brief, she decides that “This is fun for your kids ... Fun for kids.” She associates water, fun, and summer as the basis of the product appeal: “Summertime fun sort of requires water.” Phase 1—Martin. Working, independently, Martin displays the same comedic orientation and adopts the same premise as that of his partner: ‘So it should basically be fun.... Let's see, should we put something more fun.... So, add water.” His “reason why” (causal motivation for purchase) grounds the product use in comedic motivation—the search for pleasure and en- joyment: “Now, your kids can enjoy the ice cream without having to wait for a truck.” Phase 2—Linda and Martin. When Linda and Mar- tin join forces, they quickly gravitate toward a fun- related theme, triggered by Linda’s question, “Should start with the funnest thing [sic] or just some of thejummer 2001 other stuff” Linda states the case for ley Soda as “something canned that is (sie) a potential for a lot of fun" and concludes: How itis that we define that fan .. will influence and compe) purchase... It's like fun... I’ fan. So it’s like, without water, it's nothing. With wa- ter, it’s paradise... like fun in a ean. All you need is, water ... like pools. Pools are fun, but they're no fun if they don't have water. As Linda begins to create a verbal simile, the appro- priate visual image eludes her: “It’s like, something without water. Is there a way of demonstrating that?” Martin suggests a picture of a surfer without water. Although related to fun only in a contrary way, this suggestion eventually dominates the team’s creative direction Phase 3—Linda. Working alone again, Linda con- tinues to play with the verbal simile and visual image that she and Martin have developed. She repeats the refrain, “an ley Soda without water is like summer without water,” until she produces a more satisfac- tory verbal form for her analogy: “Adding water toan ley Soda ... is like adding water to summer.” She finds this “a nice proposition for people” and con- cludes, “I think we got it.” Phase 3—Martin. Meanwhile, Martin elaborates thoughts about the visual representation: “In other words, when water isn't added, you know, there’s no fun, Surfer in the desert ... just adding water, for the fun of it ... just drawing a little surfer, he's in the desert.” Like Linda, Martin focuses on the crucial analogy but, befitting his art orientation, works it out in pictorial terms. Phase 4—Linda and Martin, When Linda and Mar- tin get together for their final joint session, they lose the logic of their key simile. Linda begins by stating the analogy quite correctly: “And the point is, adding water to an ley Soda is like adding water to summer [because] without the water, there's no fun.” But Martin objects that “fun” is not stated overtly. So Linda tries out various word combinations until she finds one that includes the word “fun”: “ley Soda without water is like summer without, is like sum- mer without water, but that’s not getting to the point. It's like, adding water to an Tey Soda is like adding water to summer... It’s like adding water to fun.” The problem with this revision is that the inclusion of the word “fun” subverts the logic of the guiding analogy. When “adding water to fun” is substituted for “adding water to summer,” a non sequitur results. Linda confounds the two, saying “Addling] water to the new ley Soda is like adding water ... to either fun or summer.” Martin asks, “Should it be summer or should it be fun?” Linda elaborates on the parallel, saying “this thing needs water, so does this.... This needs water to be fun, this needs water to be fun.” Clearly, guided by their dominant comedic myth, the two are struggling over the problem of how to pre- serve the logic of their analogy while simultaneously adding the word “fun” to their advertising copy. When the two discuss the “surfboard ... on a sand dune or “surfer in the desert” image, Linda's empha- sis on the logic of the analogy is at odds with Martin's insistence on illustrating the fun. They compromise when Martin offers to draw the surfboard in a way that “might be kind of funny” and Linda agrees. Still struggling, Linda now condemns her former slogan on the grounds that it “doesn’t make sense”: “T'm literal, but there's something clearer by saying, add- ing the water to this is like adding water to that.... You know? Meaning you're going to get the same fun.” Linda recognizes that when using the stranded surfer image, the fun part remains implicit and invis- ible. To make the notion of fun more explicit, they try out different slogans such as “just add fun,” “all you need is water and fun,” “we add the fun, you add the water,” and “adding water to this is like adding fun to summer.” Under time pressure, Linda returns to ‘it's like adding water to fun,” though she still has doubts, about its logic. Because Martin has already drawn the surfer, Linda gives in and expresses guarded satisfac- tion: “Tt’s kind of funny to equate the two situations to needing water... It’s like adding water to fun.” Phase 5—Linda. After the ad is finished, Linda voices the team’s commitment to the theme of fun, even though she recognizes that this focus has led to the creation of a slogan in which illogic prevails: ‘The advertising that we ended up with .. deals with adding things together to make somet) better... meaning the sand dune, the guy surfing obviously needs water before it’s really fun... 1 mean, he's trying to have fun, but he needs the water. And this thing is something that is fun, it's potentially a great.deal of fun, but you have that. little key ingredient to make it come to life. [but] I think we've probably missed the mark, Phase 5—Martin, Martin's visual conception drives the final ad to the point where he does not recognize its disruption of Linda’s originally clear simile: “But, you know, new fey Soda, I forget exactly what we Settled on, but ... new ley Soda, you know, it’s like adding water, you know, it’s like adding water to summer, adding water to fun or something like that.” Martin has fulfilled his task by providing a pictorial image for the ad, despite the logical inconsistency introduced in the bargain.10 The Journal of Advertising Figure 1 Linda and Martin's Comedy Orientation Ad New icy Soda. It's like adding water to fun. Introducing the world’s first instant ice-cream soda. All you need is a glass, an Icy Soda and a little tap water. And watch your kids react to the rich, frothy fizz it makes in a minute. In two all-natural flavors: chocolate and strawberry. Tag: (Product Shot: ley Soda.) We add the fun. You add the water. Note: The copy appears where indicated in the ad. Linda and Martin—Summary Interpretation. In the present context, Linda and Martin demonstrate a propensity to force the ideas of fun and water to- gether in their advertisement, even though this insis- tence results in an illogical non sequitur: “New Iey Soda ... it's like adding water to fun!” Figure 1 pre- sents the ad layout developed by Linda and Martin. The copy reflects a metaphoric connection based on the simile “adding water to Icy Soda is like adding water to summer (because both produce fun).” How- ever, the statement of the analogy is confused be- cause the actual claim reads “adding water to fun” rather than “adding water to summer.” As it stands, this claim does not appear to make much sense, for there is no way to interpret how water can be added to fun. Although the team considers a surfer stranded on the desert as funny, this image can be defended as “funny” only with some sense of strain. In short,‘Summer 2001 u though the comic spirit often emphasizes fun at the expense of rationality, Martin and Linda’s ad ap- pears questionably logical Romance Orientation—Hank (Copy) and Victor (Art) ‘The orientation toward romance—the mythic type that embodies a quest for peace, beauty, or special status and that often moves toward retrospection or idealization of the past (Table 1}—is centered in nostalgia. Phase 1—Hank. From the outset, Hank selects the romantic theme of nostalgia: “So you've got ... an ice cream soda which is an old-fashioned type of de: sert.” He positions the quest for something “special as a romantic yearning to relive the past: “Is it just something different? Something unique, something new, something different? Is it a retro thing? Maybe ice eream sodas are old fashioned.” Phase I—Victor. Here again, Vietor the art director ‘echoes the copywriter: “Instantly I'm thinking about my childhood.” Vietor also seizes on the benefit of convenience, a theme that Hank had mentioned, re- eating “quick” as his key word: ey Soda is “quick, ‘convenient... Quick, convenient ... quick and convenient quick, convenient... Well, it's quick.” On the basis ofthis, ‘Victor anticipates a benefit-centered execution: “My mes- sage is going to talk about convenience.” Phase 2—Hank and Victor. When Hank (oriented toward nostalgia and “old-fashioned” values) and Vie~ tor (oriented toward childhood and “quick convenience” as a key benefit) convene, they gravitate toward a nostalgic fantasy that is more visually accessible than the concept of convenience. Victor explores the visual dimension of the nostalgia theme: ‘That ice cream soda you had when you were a little kid, you know, your Dad bought it for you or some- body bought you an ice eream soda and it's a hot Saturday afternoon and ... you know, it was some- thing as simple as an ice eream soda was special when you were a kid... Say—I mean I like—that. retro comment you said before... I mean, say you draw, you get a sepia photo, right? And you get a little'kid, like the Norman Reclewoll thing... And ‘you talk shout “remember when you had the time to share an ice cream soda with your Dad? 1 don't know if that's right but... Remember what an ice cream soda tasted lke? Or do you remember —also a big thing about these soda fountain ce cream sodas as a kid, was watching thom make it, you know. mean there was something really —I mean watching thera make that thing, put the ioe cream in ‘Thus, when the two turn to personal memories, they begin constructing the romantic framework by link- ing nostalgia with the quest for something special. “Remember when” references time past, when ice cream sodas were special because adults were the only ones who could make them (soda jerks) and pur- chase them (to give children a treat). Hank describes the remembered quest for uniqueness as “a feeling of nostalgia” and expresses his faith that “most people think of that as a positive.” Phase 3—Hank. Hank elaborates the romantic theme of nostalgic convenience by role-playing a child and a parent: “When you were a kid you always dreamed about having a freezer full of ice cream so- das. Now you can.... An old-fashioned ice cream soda «all you do is add water.... To you it's convenience, to your kid, it's an ice cream soda.” However, when he vicariously shifts from the adult’s point of view to the child's (last sentence), he overlooks the most impor- tant thing about a nostalgia appeal to the target mar- ket; children are not nostalgic, for they have too little experience of the past to idealize it. Hence, nostalgia will work in this context only as an appeal in a eam- paign aimed at adults. Phase 3—Victor. Whereas Hank thinks about indi- vidual emblems of nostalgia, such as nickel sodas, Buffalo head nickels, and Brooklyn in the 1930s, Vie- tor begins by thinking about the visual gestalt: “Prob- ably a duotone.... Or maybe an old photo, yeah, maybe .. maybe we have a really nice quaint little nostalgic photo.” Victor repeats the word “remember” eighteen times in rapid succession, using this refrain to trigger vicarious identification with the childhood experience of ice cream sodas. He describes the reconstructed memory as follows: ‘That perspective of being a kid and seeing an ice cream sod on the counter, and you're dawn here, and it’s up... there... You get the old photo, it's on the counter, it could really be pretty. And the type says ice cream soda just the way you rememaber it. Yeah, that connects, Because that’s just the way J remember looking up at it. Ice eream soda just the ‘way you remember it Victor approves his nostalgic vision, connecting it to personal memory: “There's something nice about that. It brings me back. It brings me back to when ice cream soda was something special, and it talks about the benefit of the product, which is convenience and speed.” However, like Hank, Vietor neglects a major flaw in his temporal logic. Neither today’s child nor his or her parent can fee! nostalgic about Brooklyn in the 1930s, for anyone who was a child in 1930 would be an octogenarian by now. For this particular time period to make sense, the target market would have to be grandparents, clearly not part of the strategie ————————12. The Journal of Adverti Figure 2 Hank and Victor’ Romance Orientation Ad | eid aaa | regen nih ei Mopac anal ! See dey Sous "Pon Tee brief. Thus, when Victor draws on childhood memo- ries toclicit the feelings of a child looking up at a soda fountain, he privileges the expression of emotion in, visual terms at the expense of the logieal underpin- nings of the generational relationship. Phase 4—Hank and Victor. When Hank rejoins Vie~ tor, the two revisit the 1930s setting, and Vietor frames the slogan: “Ice cream soda, just the way you temem- ber it. You still don't have to make it.” While the two finalize their design, this slogan is reiterated twelve more times. Meanwhile, Hank comes up with a tag line that references convenience: “Easy to make, fun to drink.” The two repeat the term “old-fashioned” ten mes as they try to work it into the copy, and Victor has the final say on the visual: “I'm the art director.” Although various interpretations are possible, this gra- tuitous comment seems to imply that Vietor wishes to distance himself from the verbal copy and to accept, responsibility only for the pictorial artwork Phase 5 — Victor. In his concluding protocol, Victor shows little concern about the ad's illogie, He does not question the appropriateness of a 1930s nostalgia theme for a market of children and young parents, nor does he worry about how something can be easy to make if you (still) don't have to make it. Instead, he turns inward to the creative domain, finding satistac- tion in a visual design that uses a child’s perspective to convey admiration of a soda-fountain treat. Hank and Victor—Summary Interpretation. Hank and Victor produce a nostalgia-based ad (Figure 2) that emphasizes “the way you remember ... an old- fashioned ice eream soda.” Hlere, the invocation of the good old days when someone else made ice cream sodas for consumers leads to the slogan, “you still don't have to make it.” However, this slogan is con- Joined with the elaim that Iey Soda is “easy to make,” clearly an internal inconsistency. Hence, in the situa- tion represented by the present task assignment, the‘Summer 2001 13 vivification of a guiding myth again comes at the expense of logic. This time, the promise of “an old- fashioned ice eream soda without the hassle of mak- ing it yoursel!” contradicts the claim that it is “easy to make.” In short, in the present context, adherence to a mythie form again leads a team to create an adver- tisement that, in essence, argues with itself. Tragedy Orientation—Edgar (Copy) and Karl (Art) ‘The orientation toward tragedy—the mythic type that, embodies a struggle with serious issues and heroic suf- fering, often ending in death or disaster (Table 1)—is transmuted in advertising to tragedy avoidance. That is, the product benefit is that it prevents tragedy by averting death or other undesirable consequences. Phase I—Edgar. From the outset, Edgar expresses discomfort with the demands of the task, insisting that he finds it difficult to speak aloud at the same time as he works through his creative ideas, He is a bundle of complaints, whether conveyed indireetly by long pauses, frustrated sighs, and loud noises or di rectly by comments such as “I hate this part of the process [because] there's pressure to perform.” Edgar appears stalled by self-consciousness. Rather than just getting on with the task, he procrastinates by dwelling on why he cannot work this way Phase 1—Karl. By contrast, Karl is a good deal more talkative and quickly reveals the tragic side of his own mythic orientation by identifying a theme centered on the safety of never having to leave home: “So basically, we're saying we don't have to go to the ice cream stand to get this soda.” Thereafter, he repeats the phrase “available at home” four more mes and concludes, “So, we could be saying that you don't have to drive out.” Driving to the store, espe- cially in the middle of the night, is seen as potentially dangerous; the relative safety of staying at home ap- pears appealing by comparison. However, Karl soon runs out of ideas, a situation familiar to those who never leave home physically or mentally, and con: fesses, “Okay. I don'thave any thoughts at the present moment.” Thus, working independently, both Edgar and Karl appear at a loss for creative ideas, espe- cially when they are asked to think aloud. Phase 2—Bdgar and Karl, When the two join forces, Edgar first asks Karl if he is hungry, perhaps an avoidance tactic, and then begins reading Kar!'s notes. He finds something about “the flavor of ice cream available at home.” Karl elaborates on this rendition, of the tragic theme: “I was just saying that ... you don't have to go out.... You don’t have to take the family out to an ice cream shop.” Edgar responds, “Yeah, save the family wheels,” but Karl's object of concern is more for the family itself than for the ear. Here, without appearing to know why, both Edgar and Karl sound unhappy about the direction their creative efforts are taking. Edgar says, “It sucks.” Karl adds, “Well, we ...can't do anything good.” ‘Then, for several pages of protocol text, their thoughts go around in circles, until Karl returns to the tragedy avoidance theme of enjoying an ice cream soda in safety, “without leaving the house.” In this, he gives the benefit of convenience a tragic twist by saying, “It's like I'm looking at this thing and there's no ben- efit to it except you don’t have to go out.... You don’t have to go out to the malt shop.” Phase 3—Edgar. Left alone, Edgar mulls over the theme of danger avoidance, using an imaginary con- versation with his mother as a means of getting started: "So let’s see.... If | was talking to my mom what would I tell her if | was going to—what would 1 say to her about this? Ahm, you know, I'd say, milk shake without ever having to leave home. You know, safe.” However, he does not get very far with his ideas, first belittling his own efforts as “stupid,” then making sounds, sighing, and banging on the table to, signal frustration. Phase 3—Karl. Meanwhile, Karl pursues the tragic theme by thinking up an association between the product and the customer value to whieh it appeals. His argument is that the value of family togetherness is reinforced when ice cream sodas are available at. home: “Keeping the family together... lee eream soda is now available at home.... You never have to leave the house... Just stay home.” Phase 4—Edgar and Karl. Short of time, Edgar and Karl now find themselves in a procrastination- precipitated endgame, having to do most of their still- unfinished creative work at an uncomfortably accelerated pace. After some false starts, Edgar suggests an appeal based on the premise that the product is “Good for pregnant women. And their husbands... Serve with pickles.” The oddness of these product appeal associations may reflect an unconscious parallel between suffering in childbirth and in the creative process, in which the discomforts of pregnant women are equated with the labor of producing an ad. So Edgar and Karl ignore other ideas and go with the pregnancy execution, devising the slogan, “You don’t have to leave home to get this great taste.” Edgar combines this idea with the claim, that “Husbands love it,” saying, “Dude, that’s the line. New ley Soda. Husbands love it.” And Karl jumps on the bandwagon: “That's kind of funny.... Husbands4 The Journal of Advertising Figure 3 Edgar and Karl's Tragedy Orientation Ad UU WHEITHE CPAUINE foe A CREAMY cous ICE (OCR Sapk STEED NO) Un) HE UNDUE CE RE WRanT NOU ONY HHUE-TO 0 4S PAEAS YOUR stewed) AP (las cREAT WITH POKES To) [eX FODAY love it” "Then the two realize that they need some body copy and ask themselves what copy will ft with the exeeution, At this point, a telling bit of forgetfulness—a tip-of- the-tongue hesitation—occurs, when they scroll through synonyms like “urge,” “fetish,” and “desire” before hitting on the term they are seeking, “erav- ing” This inability of the two to think of a common household word is noteworthy. Perhaps the reason is that the word and the state to which it refers, that is, “eraving,” indicate a desire that is out of control and potentially dangerous. Danger avoidance as the domi- nant motif in Edgar’s and Karl's thinking on this particular occasion signals a propensity toward trag- edy, echoed by the frustrating creative struggle they experience when seeking a hook for their ad in the present context. The idea of a craving, a loss of control in the face of an overwhelming desire, may be repressed, because it reminds them of their own discomfort with the creative assignment and their difficulty in satisfy- ingits demands. Furthermore, “craving” suggests “cra- ven” (“cowardly”), a potential reminder to the members, of this team that—despite their bravado (calling each other “Dude,” cracking jokes about going out for chips, making fun of the researchers by implying that they are fools trying to write a dissertation about the ere- ative process)—they might nonetheless feel somewhat insecure or even less than fully adequate to the task‘Summer 2001 15 at hand, Ultimately, they produce a far-fetched print ad that grabs at (soda) straws to convey a feeling of security. Phase 5—Edgar. Edgar describes his own creative process as one in which “I kind of flounder around” and elaborates on his feelings of inadequacy: Yeah, right, my typical thinking in, whenever I'm confronted with a projeet... ll try and like do it logically, you know, and rationally and get very frustrated by that and feel, you know what I mean, start Lo got feelings of apprehension and anxiety Lot of times I'l just kind of like just blank out.. Most of the initial ideas are really pretty stupid ‘and then I feel kind of—you feel kind of crummy about that but it's inevitable, His phrasing—the “inevitable” agony of “confront- ing’ a creative task with its feelings of “frustration,” “apprehension,” and “anxiety”—implies a temperamen- tal affinity with the tragedy avoidance theme in his ad. Phase 5—Karl. Karl takes a more positive view of creativity, sceing the process as one in which he gen- erates a lot of “bad ideas” so that he is able to “shed those and move on to better ideas which come out more often at the end of a process than at the begin- ning.” His “better idea” for this ad consists of avoid- ing danger and seeking security by staying at home: We have this woman who is pregnant, and, obvi ously, pregnant women have certain desires for ice cream, pickles, whatever... And the twist is, the wife [likes] it, but the husband {loves} it because he doesn't have to eave the house to go out and get this thing... You don't have to leave the house to get this, thing: because you have it at home... So the key benefit was you don't have to leave the house. ‘Now you ean stay at home with dad and make this thing ..not going out... The main thing, from this ad, we think the takeaway should be you don't have to leave the house. Its right there for you Edgar and Karl—Summary Interpretation. Edgar and Karl produce a tragedy avoidance ad (Figure 3) in which the motivation for product purchase hinges on the quest for safety. The decision that the benefit is avoidance of danger leads to an essentially nonsen- sical execution. The premise is that husbands love Icy Soda because it permits them to cater to the food cravings of their pregnant wives in the middle of the night without leaving the safety of home. ‘This suffer- ing-related execution as the thematic purchase out- come of a dessert treat appears to sublimate concerns over the anguish of a difficult birth, with this team betraying its own creative labor pains in every phase of its work, Irony Orientation—Sam (Copy) and Tim (Art) ‘The orientation toward irony—the mythic type that takes ignorance as its enemy, bemoans the failure to understand, emphasizes the discrepancy between sur- face (appearance) and substance (reality), and works, toward an epiphany or insight based on the unmask- ing of true revelations (Table 1)—is centered in de- tachment, Authorial distance sustains the outcomes of satire (making fun of the product/consumer/ad) or self-parody (making fun of the sel!) Phase I—Sam. From the beginning, Sam adopts an irreverent and even negative attitude toward ley Soda: “It sounds ineredibly unappetizing.... Can't think of a worse idea for a product.... | also can't imagine who would possibly want to buy this.” Just as some teams used key words such as “fun” or “remember” and another used key phrases such as “don't leave home, jams key signifier is the question mark. In this spirit, Sam produces a list of interrogatives: “What is the cylinder made of? How does it come out of the eylin- der? Does it freeze?” He voices “doubt” that anyone would buy the product, sees it as something from which “there's not a lot of benefit,” and even deems it “disgusting.” Sam is a skeptic, expressing doubts about the viability of ley Soda in the marketplace. He finds the client's brief “confusing,” keeps “wondering what they mean,” and concludes, *I don’t know.... I don’t know.... I have no idea,” Phase I—Tim. Tim's remarkably similar refrain ‘echoes Sam’s skepticism: don’t know... don't know.... | wouldn't know... I don't know.... I don't know a lot of things about this... I guess. I guess I would also need to know. This is the kind of stuff I would have asked the account people to answer for me and be a Jot more clear, because like most strategies and briefs, they're way too vague and I have to guess on most of the stulf. Clearly, Sam and Tim are on the same wavelength, in, that both are concerned about not having enough information and are suspicious about hidden at- tributes of Iey Soda that make it unappealing. Their job, as they see it, is to unmask the hidden reality: 1 would also like to sce what the stuff tasted like, that would make a difference tome, How much does it really taste ike an ice eream soda? It sounds tke it, but who knows? Who knows what the quality of their ice cream is?... And without seeing the packag- ing, 'm having a hard time envisioning this deserip- tion of a miniature eylindrical ice cream container.16 The Journal of Advertising ‘Tim is also concerned about “price, another ques- tion that’s not answered.” Furthermore, he questions the elaim of convenience because “I don't think it’s a convenience having it at home.” Finally, he points out the limited choice of flavors (chocolate and straw- berry), “which really doesn't make for any kind of exciting, compelling product.” Phase 2—Sam and Tim. Their irreverent detach- ment and quizzical skepticism orient this team to- ward irony, Whereas the other creative teams ac- cepted the reality of the product and simply took its existence as a given, Tim does not: “The description is very incomplete.... I feel like there's a lot of other things that I would need to know about this. I mean, obviously it's fictitious.” Suspicions aroused, Sam and Tim conclude that purchase of the fictitious prod: uct provides no clear advantage over assembling the ingredients separately—ice cream, milk, seltzer, syrup—and mixing the drink, Tim asks, “Where is the main benefit in this?” The two agree that they are working with “a product that’s destined to fail” because it is based on “a bad concept.” ‘The team engages in postmodern reflexivity by sug- gesting that perhaps they ought not aim “to be .. interesting or intelligent about it at all.” ‘Tim is, tempted to be “wacky,” in part because, in his view, “nobody cares.” This approach reflects the ironist's unwillingness to misrepresent the offering by violat- ing the truth or subverting reality. Sam says, “I think we sort of have to... pretend that we actually would want to buy this.” To which Tim adds, “True enough, but I don't want to lie.” Ultimately, Sam concludes, ‘Oh, it doesn't matter, it's not a real product,” which, reinforces the notion of a disparity between their atti- tudes toward “make-believe” versus the “real thing. Although Sam and Tim toy with some of the same ideas as the other teams (Norman Rockwell, 1950s nostalgia, homeyness), they discard a straight (that is, nonironic) approach to the ad. Unlike the romantic team, they realize that “nostalgia” is “not for kids” and turn their attention to visuals more potentially appealing to a target market of children. Admitting that he is “still confused ... a little confused,” Sam suggests, “How about a cow that’s like being shaken, up, you know, like carbonated.” Tim adds, “Or maybe it’s like a cow who looks like he’s blowing bubbles, like a fish.” Phase 3—Sam. In Phase 3, Sam is blocked by his, lack of understanding of the product reality. He ex- plores the magic idea of “something amazing” about to happen to an ordinary “glass of water” but con- cludes, “I don't know, I think the basic problem is I just don’t understand—I sort of have a hard time visualizing how this produet even really works.... It may look like an ordinary glass of water, [but] actu- ally it's about to become an ice cream soda.... What the heck is it?” So, preoccupied with the problem of appearance versus reality and with the difficulty of dealing with something he does not understand, Sam. produces nothing, Phase $—Tim. Meanwhile, Tim elaborates on the parodie image of a cow blowing bubbles to indicate carbonation: “My visual was a cow that looks almost, like it's under water, but ... he’s [sic] got bubbles rising up from his [sie] mouth the way a fish would.” ‘Tim decides to go with a visual image that will appeal to children on the basis of its silliness: Visually, visually, visually, les see. What do you say with that? The diflerence is the bubbles, for the cow. ‘The difference is the bubbles. the bubbles rising from his mouth [sic It would probably first ofall make the cov look drunk, but that’s not my problem. However, Tim recognizes the difficulty of creating verbal content to accompany his “stupid” cow visual: Lines to play off ofthat... What to say with that... You need copy here. What kind of eow does it take to make Tey Soda”... What kind of cow would we use for ley Soda? Or what kind of « cow does it take to make ley Soda? What kind of cows? How can ‘you tell? How can you tell an ley Soda cow from any other?... How to tell an Tey Soda cow from any ‘other. You look for the bubbles. ‘Tim first generates a visual image and then verbal copy that makes sense of the visual. It may be frivolous sort of sense, but at least it is eoherent. Nonetheless, despite internal coherence, the benefit, to the consumer is not clear. Thus, Tim's work sug- gests that because he cannot think of anything posi tive to say about the brand, he will make fun of it in a way that he thinks will appeal to a child. Phase 4—Sam and Tim. On a roll, Tim takes overin this session, tapping into Sam's previous visual/verbal, ideas. Tim's suggested visual is a “cow with the bubbles coming up,” and his verbal copy is designed to lure the reader into the ad with a question and answer: “How can you tell an ley Soda cow from any other? You look. for the bubbles.” The copy is ironic, for it references the discrepancy between appearance and reality by point ing out that it is necessary to unmask falsehood to reveal truth hidden below the surface. In other words, at first glance, all cows look alike. But the moment of truth occurs when one sees that the Iey Soda cow (un- like the others) is blowing bubbles. Although this saves the team from hypocritical praise of a product about which they are deeply skeptical, it does not give rise to a convincingly relevant ad.‘Summer 2001 7 Sam agrees that “the cows are good” because they “are really aimed at kids.” In need of a headline, Tim repeats his question “So what does an Tey Soda cow look like?” But this time Tim answers his own ques- tion as an ironist seeking to demystify the world: “Well, actually.... Oh, actually ... actually, they look about the same as most other cows.” The team seizes this idea as its main copy point: “What does an Iey Soda cow look like? Actually, they look about the same as most other cows, it's what we add to their that makes all the difference.” Thus, ultimately, when they strip away surface appearances to reveal the hidden reality underneath, the irony turns out to be that there is no irony: “Actually, they look about the same as most other cows.” However, undermin- ing the irony subverts the visual (cows in a field, with one blowing bubbles), which depends on the premise that you can recognize the ley Soda cow because it is the one blowing carbonated bubbles. In fact, it is present in the background of the team’s visual execu- tion, which makes no sense when the copy claims that all of the cows look alike Phase 5—Sam. Sam defends his tendency to ask ques- tions about misleading or unclear items in a client's brief, claiming that skepticism facilitates clarity: { would say that from the beginning I had a lot of problems with the deseription and the information Twas given, And I kept feeling like—1 mean, (H] think it's sort of misleading in the way this was designed... Usually it's when you start to dig deeper and ask questions .. you see .. what the crucial ‘elements are in understanding a product and mak: ing advertising for it... And 1 think that really bugged me the whole time because I think if you listen buck to the tape, { kept having problems ~ ‘you know, a lot of things that were sai on the sheet T had questions about, or seemed misleading to me, or T wanted it to be'elarified. And that realy, I think, clouded my ability to tackle the problem. Here, Sam acknowledges that his ability to create an effec- tive ad was “clouded” but blames poor product design for this outcome. Note that Sam responds negatively toa facet of the task that was constant across teams. Phase 5—Tim. Tim is a bit more satisfied with the creative output. Realizing that he “wasn't going to get a great impactful headline, something that’s re- ally intelligent,” Tim claims that he has selected an appeal that he thinks will amuse children: So at that point I realized it's just got to be some. ‘thing that was like image, something that a little kid would be just drawn to or amused by or, you know, something tha¢ a little kid ... would be en- tertained by, and therefore would want that prod- uct. Which is why T came up with the cow, because cows are generally stupid-looking creatures and ‘would be interesting graphically on paper... The bubbles sort of added to the humor of it, because it is something that just makes a stupid animal look ‘even more stupid and more amusing. Nonetheless, this ad is as beset by internal contradic- tions as the others. The pictorial content features a number of identical cows, with one differentiated by blowing bubbles, whereas the copy claims that an Icy Soda cow looks “about the same as most other cows.” Ultimately, Tim undercuts the team's basic premise— an appeal amusing to children—by admitting that children are unlikely to be the target audience of a print ad: “Again, a problem that we discussed in the ‘other room was that it is going to run in magazines, and kids don’t really read magazines.... So that’s a problem right there with the ad, which if I was a creative director, I would kill that ad just because of that.” Why the team did not instead focus on creating print ad to appeal to young parents who read maga- zines Tim does not say, but this lapse may stem from the partners’ deeply ironic, even cynical, posture Sam and Tim—Summary Interpretation. Sam's and ‘Tim's ironic detachment from the product is evidenced by their insistence on poking fun at it, Although the other teams begin by making fun of the product, Sam and Tim engage in mockery throughout to the exclu- sion of anything positive. Thus, in the present con- text, Sam and Tim's ad (Figure 4) reflects the ironic impulse carried to extremes. As a result, it too is confusing and internally self-contradictory. Multimythical Idea Generation—Anne (Copy) and Jack (Art) Unlike the approaches illustrated thus far, what we would call “multimythical idea generation” draws inspiration from more than one of the mythic types, (Table 1). Phase I — Anne. Early on, Anne proposes the idea that “ice cream soda is a kind of a nostalgic thing because it used to be that people got those at soda fountains.” She tries out various phrases that cap- ture this focus: “Something about the old-fashioned ice cream soda ... old-fashioned goodness at home ... the way it used to be ... or old-fashioned taste.” Her immediate project is to come up with an idea for a headline: “So maybe something about ... you know, put a soda fountain in your freezer or something.” Unlike other teams that began by considering global issues, such as the nature of the product, or personal issues, such as responses to this mode of advertising creation or memories related to the product, Anne18 The Journal of Advertising Figure 4 ‘Sam and Tim's Irony Orientation Ad WHAT DOES AN ICY SODA COW LOOK LIKE? 4 ‘What does an Icy Soda cow look like? ‘Actually, they look about the same as most other cows. It's what we add to their milk that makes all the difference. Flavored syrup and carbonated water, frozen together with rich, tasty ice cream. All you do is add water and you've got a great-tasting, refreshing drink. You can pick one up in your grocer’s freezer section. Icy Soda. The ice cream soda comes home, Note: The copy appears where indicated in the ad.‘Summer 2001 19 starts small, tackling the manageable task of writing ‘@ headline. 'To this end, she tries out a number of competing ideas including several visited by other teams and thinks about alternative mythic orienta- tions, benefits, and values. For example, she men- tions ‘just add water” and “it's fizzy too,” echoing Linda ‘and Martin’s comic thoughts; “the taste you thought only your grandfather would know,” echoing Hank and Victor's nostalgic execution; “the sundae has met its match,” at least a potential tragedy aver sion. appeal; and “something exciting for your freezer” other than lima beans, echoing Tim and Sam's irony. ‘The difference is that Anne thinks not in vague gener- alities, but in specifie short phrases, coming up with alternatives limited to no more than nine words. From among this palette of available options, her final choice is “the soda fountain that fits in your freezer.” Phase 1—Jack. Jack is also fuent in specific idea generation, focusing more on the benefit as a slogan than asa headline. He also recapitulates options con. sidered by the other teams: “quick and convenient, “wholesomeness,” “a delicious drink,” “a quick enjoy~ able thing,” and “have one in the summertime after . playing out in the yard or something like that.” After listing these and other alternatives, he seleets the romantic theme of nostalgia to position the product as something associated with favorite past summers: Because like most people probably have a summer in their past that is more fun than the summer they're currently having... ley Soda .. isthe flavor of your favorite summer .. like . 50s iustra tions of kids playing. Maybe, not illustrations, pic- tures even, Pictures of kids in the '50s.... Okay °50s illustrations and pictures. to place it in tory... And of course not everyone grew up in the ‘50s, so there'd be one for a6. eould be into the "40s too... Okay, I would say 30s and 40s... Yeah, ‘maybe this whole thing has a nostalgia feel to it ‘Thus, working independently, Jack ends with the ro- mantic ethos of nostalgia with whieh Anne had started (though, from the viewpoint of current young parents, ‘one might argue that he would have done better to push his nostalgic orientation in the direction of the 1960s and 1970s as opposed to the 1940s and 1930s) Phase 2—Anne and Jack, Rarely digressing from the task at hand, Anne and Jack talk through a num- ber of ideas generated while each was working alone: ‘just. add water,” “it's so exciting,” “basically an ice éream float,” “turn your tap into a soda fountain,” “H,0.... the incredibly difficult, rare, hard to find itera you need to make Icy Soda work,” and “little happy kkid faces” coming like droplets out of a faucet, They find this almost surreal idea appealing but reject it along with multiple competing themes in favor of ‘what they both label “a nostalgia kind of thing.’ ‘To actualize the ad, Anne and Jack need an imagi- native vehicle that will turn a nostalgic focus into a visual and verbal execution. They find this in @ multimythie combination of a comic and a romantic idea. Anne’s verbal theme (“The soda shop that fits in, ‘your freezer") is fleshed out by means of Jack's visual scene (nostalgic imagery from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s) to depiet a replica of an authentic soda foun- tain in miniature. Jack deseribes the general content of this picture: “We could actually show that, like a freezer, there's a freezer open and there's a little soda, shop inside.” Anne follows with a more specific deserip- tion: “That's it, that’s what we should do. Okay. Let's do that then. So there's the freezer, and then the door's ‘open. And then inside you see the soda shop, and .. then we'll say the soda shop that fits in your freezer.” ‘They jointly decide on anchoring the nostalgia in the 1950s—with Jack saying, “Yeah, it’s counting strictly on the '50s photos’—to which Anne adds, “Right, and with the '50s kind of type and all that, you know, to convey the feeling.” (Again, one might argue that this temporal orientation targets current grandparents more successfully than young parents. Perhaps the point here is that, during the 1960s and 1970s, ice cream sodas were already seen as old-fash- joned evocations of the 1950s and earlier times, This, potential extrapolation never becomes explicit in the Anne-Jack protocols, but it may well have represented a tacit agreement between the two below the surface.) Phase 3—Anne. Alone and still reviewing multiple options, Anne replays some of her previous ideas, ineluding one similar to Linda and Martin’s just-add- water appeal. However, unable to find something “re- ally simple to do” in an execution, Anne turns to nostalgia and to visualizing the details with whieh it can be actualized in print: + nostalgia... after drinking it you'll want to paton your poodle skirt and head for the sock hop.... Ahm, just a sip and youll. want to put grease in your hair and penny loafers on your feet. Ahm... bringing the ‘0s into the ‘90s... theres something old-fash- joned in this house. Something old-fashioned... old- fashioned ice cream sodas for modern times... Hin. "There's something old-fashioned in this house Phase 3—Jack, Jack buys into Anne's “idea of the little soda fountain inside the freezer” and turns his, attention to executing, it with nostalgic visuals: “It’s a freezer, of course... And we have bar stools right there. I've never been in a soda fountain myself. T only know what they look like from Norman Rockwell, pictures.... Little man back there with one of those —_—_—— SSeSThe Journal of Advertising Figure 5 Anne and Jack's Ad ‘THE SobA FOUNTAIN THAT FITS IN YouR FRECZER. little paper caps on ... it's kind of 50s looking, ’50s as in time period.” His self-reflective thoughts are positive: | think that's, by far, the best idea because it de- fines exactly what—it gets that nostalgia feel that, we had talked about earlier, because it is a 1950s: looking soda shop.... The 1950s soda shop ... ad- dresses that quality of wholesomeness .. the "50s motif kind of suggests wholesomeness, definitely, And the quality as well. ‘50s kind of have a qual- ity... This has a lot going for it. Jack also enunciates the similarity in thinking that binds team members together: “Normally we would do like ten ads and show it to our creative director and then let him pick. But, ahm, actually, we usually have the same taste in a final product.” Phase 4—Anne and Jack. When Anne and Jack combine forces again, they review the full range of options one more time before making a final selee- tion. Unlike some of the other teams, they show adher- ence to procedural rules for facilitating the creative process and consider numerous possibilities before set- ‘ling on the romantic nostalgia theme. From this point on, they focus mostly on refining the execution. They talk about the style of the lettering and the costume of SSSSummer 2001 21 the soda jerk. They provide pro and con arguments for the addition of more copy and for the explicit mention, of “just add water” or “chocolate and strawberry.” Anne and Jack end by discussing the difficulty of verbalizing ideas (thinking out loud) when alone. Jack explains that he did this by pretending that he was talking to Anne, using an imaginary partner as a means of generating authentic self-talk: "You know what? It made me revert back to the way I work with a partner, though, talking like this. Because I think differently when I talk out loud... ‘Cause it was more like I would just sit here thinking like, oh, I'm just going to kind of like pretend like I'm talking to you.” Phase 5—Anne. Retrospectively, Anne focuses on the ideas that culminated in the nostalgic execution: I moved on to thinking about, cream sodas all about, like they're kind of nostalgic ‘and they're from the past and ... now you ean have this piece of the past in the present day. this old- fashioned thing... an old-fashioned ice cream soda, ‘The nostalgia seemed richer .. tapping into what people felt about ice eream sodas from before. Phase 5—Jack. In this last phase, Jack points out that the final product reflects memories drawn from his own life that overlap similar memories on Anne's part, enabling both to “kick start” the ad So I started thinking about how, like, oh, how has the product, anything like this, ever affected me in ry life? I was thinking of when I was a little kid, you know, I might have something like this referring back to old-time summers that I would remember. And then actually Anne was kind of _going in the same direction, So when we met to ether we were—we had kind of ended up in the ‘same area like bringling] the past into the present through this product. So, ike onee we finally got that litte kick start from each other, then wo— then our thing kind of took off from there. Anne and Jach—Summary Interpretation. As docu: mented at some length, the previous four teams ap- pear to have subverted the creative process by hew- ing too closely to one or another formulaic mythical approach. Each team was confined by “in the box” thinking, which led it to pursue one mythie orienta- tion at the expense of others that, singly or in combi- nation, might have led to a more effective solution based on more flexible ideation. In consequence, the four teams’ rigid adherence to monomythic themes led to advertisements that were self-contradictory, logically inconsistent, nonsensical, or confusing, In contrast, the fifth team of Anne and Jack pursued “out of the box” thinking by visiting a variety of mythic orientations before selecting a romantic approach cen- tered on nostalgia as the mythos of choice (Figure 5). Evaluation Despite some potential confusion in the temporal period of its nostalgic orientation, we consider the fifth print ad created by Anne and Jack the only successful one with respect to its likely effectiveness, for at least four reasons. First, this is the only ad that is internally consistent and makes sense on its own terms. Second, two of the three expert judges (the account planner and the copywriter) ranked this ad as the most creative. Third, the mean expert ratings of this ad were the highest of the five on an index comprising the dimensions of “originality,” “meeting ‘strategie objectives,” “achieving the desired tone,” and “satisfying the makers of ley Soda” (these ratings are an admittedly rough, inherently nonrigorous, and highly exploratory basis for assessment). Fourth (with similar methodological caveats), Anne and Jack were the only team whose members were satisfied with their own ad, self-rating it noticeably higher than did the other four teams their own ads in terms of “own, satisfaction” and “meeting objectives.” Discussion General Summary of Exploratory Findings In contrast to the view of creativity as a mysterious “spark” that is difficult to pin down, our analysis suggests that the creative process involved in advertising design can be interpreted and understood. Creative output is not the result of some magical process but rather ean be linked to specific underlying mechanisms, The notion of creativ- ity as dependent on sampling from a large number of concepts coheres well with the ideas popularized by Wallas (1926) and with the aspects of “divergent thinking” dis- cussed by Guilford (1956). Advertising textbooks also ad- vocate generating a large number of ad concepts (Batra, ‘Aaker, and Myers 1996) on the basis of the assumption, that the rewards of producing numerous ideas will out- ‘weigh the casts (Winston 1990; see also Campbell 1960). Our exploratory findings lend further tentative support to this argument. Our interpretation of the concurrent ver~ bal protocols suggests that four out of five creative teams were oriented toward one mythic type to the exclusion of others and, consequently, opted for less than truly creative solutions, Illustratively demonstrating the selfimposed constraints underlying these “failures” can facilitate an understanding of the type of more divergent ereative pro- cesses needed to engender more effective advertising, With respect to our specific illustrative case examples, Linda and Martin were obsessed with fun at the cost of logic and ended up subordinating the creative process —————22 to the cause of comedy centered on the idea of adding water to fun. Hank and Vietor revisited the days of yore only to come back with a nostalgic advertising theme that was deeply flawed by an almost embarrassingly illogical notion of (still) not having to make something that is easy to make. Edgar and Karl's pregnant woman was the focal figure in a tragedy avoidance ad that was perhaps more reflective of their own painful struggles with the creative assignment than of any potential benefits to the husbands of expectant mothers. Sam and Tim engaged in ironic commentary to such an extent that their ad nonsensically portrayed a cow that both does and does not look like other cows. These teams confined themselves to one or another formu- laic, inflexibly applied, or even standardized mythie approach and, as a result, produced advertisements that were self-contradictory, logically inconsistent, nonsensical, or otherwise ineffective. In contrast, Anne and Jack generated ideas across a number of mythic orientations and shaped their ereative output around romantic approach chosen after an open review of various competing possibilities. In this sense, they exemplify Osborn's (1963) insistence on the connection between idea quantity and idea quality. Although their ad seems to focus on an arguably inappropriate nostal- gic time period (the 1950s versus the 1960s or 1970s), it seems to dominate the other four contenders on the various informal bases for evaluative assessment. At the same time, the winning team constrained themselves in some ways during the creative process, Specifically, after generating ideas from a myth, ex- ecuting these ideas (e.g., as headlines), and then screening them, they then circled back to draw on a different myth as a source of additional ideas for sub- sequent screening. To the extent that they systemati- cally tapped diverse myths and were disciplined in sereening resultant ideas before making selections for further exploration, their process reflects the ob- servation that freedom balanced by constraints tends to result in creative output (ef. Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992). In contrast, the other teams were overconstrained in that they failed to explore differ- ent myths systematically or evaluate them critically prior to settling on a specific execution. In this con- nection, we propose that creative directors develop- ing advertising ideas can enhance effectiveness by encouraging creative teams to sample from multiple domains to achieve a better balance between freedom and constraints than displayed by four of the five teams studied here. Organizations can also design creativity training programs to emphasize the impor- tance of sampling from multiple domains in the idea- generation stage of creativity. The Journal of Advertising A second important observation regarding the ere- ative process concerns the finding that each individual member of a creative team appeared to start out from a mythic orientation similar to that of his or hor partner. Although this finding might be colored by the particular context of the simulated situation ex- plored here, it is an interesting commentary on cre- ative relationships and could reflect a “meeting of minds.” Of course, the two could have chosen to work, together because of this compatibility (Tsui and O'Reilly 1989), or each one could have come to re- semble the other after a long working relationship. No matter the explanation, it is striking that the copywriter and art director in a team so consistently ‘came up with similar ideas even before they discussed the strategic brief for the first time. Clearly, this lack of intragroup diversity can be a strong impediment to creativity (King and Anderson 1990; Nystrom 1979). Consistent with the literature, this exploratory find- ing suggests limits to the benefits of team tenure (Katz 1982). Specifically, as a tentative proposition in need of further empirical support, it appears that, some creative teams that work together over a period of time might tend to become inward focused and rely on patterns that have succeeded in the past rather than scanning the entire solution space for ideas. If corroborated, this tentative finding also might carry straightforward implications for the organization of creative effort. For example, teams might. periodi- cally be broken up and rotated or, if that proves coun- terproduetive, multiple teams might be assigned to dialogue on each task to ensure the consideration of competing perspectives. In addition to the exploratory findings that (1) failure to sample from a variety of alternative orientations reduces creativity and (2) eopywriters and art directors come to resemble each other s0 as potentially to limit the team's creativity, some other observations are worthy ofconsider- ation. First, as indicated by selfassessments, the mem- bers of our winning team were the most satisfied with their ad and felt that it was effective in terms of meeting, the objectives in the strategie brief. Note that each team ‘member filled out the questionnaire separately, yet Anne and Jack provided identical high ratings. Clearly, this, team felt vindicated by its exploration of multiple themes prior to settling on a theme that the others, had abandoned. Second, our exploratory ad design study mirrored reality as far as possible by using real-world creative teams that worked together and by simulating the way in which they cooperate in practice through individual and joint sessions. Al- though thinking aloud may be somewhat constrain- ing, the conversations between copywriters and artSummer 2001 23 directors nevertheless offer a penetrating glimpse into the thought processes underlying advertising design. Limitations With respect to limitations, as already mentioned, our results are based on a single observation of five teams engaged in an artificial task. Several aspects of the task and experimental procedure may have restricted creativity, For example, a two-hour time frame to design an ad is tight even by the frenzied standards of real-life advertising agencies. The time limit may have provided insufficient scope for four teams such that efficiency triumphed over effective- ness. Furthermore, somewhat unrealistically, partici- pants were prevented from asking questions that might have clarified the nature of their creative as- signment, Also, alternative channels for developing multiple approaches (e.¢., a client briefing session, an, internal agency meeting, informal interactions around the water cooler! were foreclosed to the creative teams in ways that might have truncated the usual breadth of their typical focus. Moreover, the creative briefs omitted various details pertaining to company iden- tity or brand equity considerations that would often appear in real-world creative assignments. In addi- tion, the fact that participants completed the task at the end of the day may have resulted in fatigue and thereby hampered creativity. Finally, some partici pants (especially Edgar) felt apprehensive and con- strained by having to think aloud as they designed the ad (though our data suggest that most recovered from this problem rather quickly). In short, even though the creative brief and task assignment were designed in consultation with advertising experts, the fuzziness inherent in the new product idea plus vari- ous departures from real-world agency life may have hampered creativity in various ways. Conclusion For these reasons, we do not claim that the degree of creativity in our study refleets the extent to which ad designers are collectively creative as a profession nor do we mean to pass judgment on the typical cre- ativity of the specific teams in the study. Rather, our interest was in examining the relationship between the process underlying creativity and the outcome of this process in the context of a particular and inevita- bly quasirealistic advertising creation task. Given that a creative team produced an ad that was judged to be more creative, what processes appear to explain the successful outcome? Similarly, given that some ads were judged to be less creative, what can we say about the underlying process? Our tentative explor- atory answers to such questions represent only a start- ing point in the investigation of creative processes, and creative outcomes in advertising design, Further research is needed to examine the relation- ship between a consideration of multiple approaches Gnythic as well as metaphorical, allegorical, and so forth) in the creative process and the potential reflec- tion of this process in the ereativity of the resulting advertisement. Toward that end, future studies should include depth interviews of team members concern- ing their approaches to creating ads and reflections, on the creative process; larger samples of creative teams; more realistic, less time-limited ad creation tasks with more representative and fully developed creative briefs; better simulation of the real-world agency-situated conditions in which creative teams actually work; more refined measurement procedures, for the evaluation of creative outcomes by advertising experts; and if possible, corroborative assessments of how consumers actually respond to the ads produced. Clearly, in these and other ways, more work is needed to build on the exploratory study reported here in the direction of understanding the elusive processes lead- ing to creativity in advertising. References Alden, D.L., W-D. Hoyer and. 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